Schwartzman wants to transform ‘boring’ tennis with Djokovic boost and UTS example

BUENOS AIRES – Tennis needs to modernise because it hasn’t changed for decades, believes Diego Schwartzman, officially a former tennis player as of Thursday 13 February 2025. And in that plan, the Argentine is counting on the leadership of Novak Djokovic and the example of UTS, the Ultimate Tennis Showdown.

“I would like to be there, listening, giving my opinion. I would like the players to have a much stronger voice. Djokovic is at the forefront, he’s trying to bring that change with the new federation [sic] he has,” Schwartzman said after being knocked out 6-2, 6-2 by Spain’s Pedro Martinez in the last 16 of the Argentina Open, the last tournament of his life.

Schwartzman, 32, a former world number eight, is convinced that Djokovic, the most successful tennis player of all time, “will be part of a possible change”.

“I think tennis, like many other sports, in the next 10 to 15 years is going to go in a direction of change. There’s already another type of competition, like UTS, that’s looking for that change. And a lot of times you guys [referring to journalists] somehow compare what a player earns on the Tour to what they earn at those kinds of exhibitions.”

“The reality is that it’s not just the money, but they are formats where you play fewer days and have more rest. So it’s something that closes (works) everywhere and I think tennis has to go for those models.”

What models, what advantages is Schwartzman, a semi-finalist at Roland Garros 2020, referring to? His plan aims to break the backbone of the ATP Tour, which has governed men’s tennis since the 1970s. And also to change essential aspects of the rules and matches, which, apart from the introduction of tie-breaks almost half a century ago, have remained essentially unchanged.

The UTS is an exhibition format born in 2020 and promoted by the French coach Patrick Mouratoglou and the Russian businessman Alex Popyrin, father of the tennis player Alexei Popyrin. In UTS there are no sets, but four eight-minute “quarters”, in the style of American sports, and the stopwatch, with time limits, plays an essential role. The DJ makes himself heard during the matches and it doesn’t matter how loud the crowd gets.

Players are introduced with nicknames, from Casper Ruud’s “Ice Man” to Richard Gasquet’s “The Virtuoso”, Tomas Machac’s “Air Machete” or Schwartzman’s “Peque”.

In addition, the players play less and win more, which is not a minor fact.

Schwartzman, who made his UTS debut in 2024 in Los Angeles, was originally scheduled to play this weekend in the Mexican city of Guadalajara, in the format’s first appearance in Latin America. But in the end he will not. Newly retired, these summer days in Buenos Aires are to be spent with family and friends. But UTS is among his immediate plans.

“We have to give freedom to certain places in the world that want to hold tournaments that are not the traditional seven-day, two-week tournaments. Do four or five-day things with different players and make it a bit more fun. At the end of the day, any sport, in order to survive, has to target the younger players, those who have always followed the sport and the new ones. You have to give tournaments and players the opportunity to come up with new ideas. It would be the most logical thing to do, it would be the best thing for the sport.

When would that happen? The Argentinian believes that we still have to wait: “Tennis is going to go that way. Not now, but in several years, but it will end up changing some rules.